Tales From Jokai Part 19

NEMESIS

A great festival was being held in the Castle of Sonnenburg. It was the sixth birthday of little Prince Maximilian.

The little lad had just recovered from a severe illness; from one of those epidemics especially dangerous to children.

Heinrich during his son's illness had frequently been on the verge of betraying himself. Three doctors had been summoned to the Castle, and not one of them possessed his up-to-date knowledge. And all he could do was to listen to their disputes while they were in consultation. How he would have liked to exclaim: "You are charlatans, the whole lot of you!

Poisoners! Ignoramuses! I can diagnose the case quite well; you can't."

He had to bury his knowledge out of sight. Two or three pillules administered in h.o.m.opathic doses would immediately have cured the child's weakness, and he could not give them to him. He was not allowed to save his own child. He was obliged to look on while _his colleagues_ experimented with, tortured, the child. He could not reveal to them that he was a physician. Ah, ah!--then where is your diploma? And his diploma was in the name of Heinrich Klausner.

And self love was stronger in him than paternal love. So he was silent, and looked on cold-bloodedly at the torments of his child.

And at last nature and a mother's prayers prevailed against the severity of the disease. Little Max, despite the united operations of three specialists, actually recovered. It was on his very birthday that he was permitted to leave his room.

That day was kept in the Castle as a joyful festival. The grandparents, the Prince of Sonnenburg and his wife, had come to the house. The feast had been a calm and quiet rejoicing from beginning to end. No guests outside the family had been invited.

At the end of the meal, just as the father, his face radiant with happiness, had risen with a gla.s.s of foaming champagne to propose the health of the grandparents, the Major Domo came in from the ante-chamber and whispered something in the ear of the young Princess.

For an instant, Ingola angrily contracted her brows, but the next moment a benevolent smile lit up her face.

"No. To-day I will be angry with no one. To-day I am ready to forgive my mortal foe. Let him come in."

But at the sight of the visitor, as he pa.s.sed through the doorway, the champagne gla.s.s which had been raised for the toast fell from Heinrich's hand, and he himself collapsed into a chair.

The visitor was Gottlieb Klausner; he had entered the banqueting-room in his simple black ca.s.sock.

He made straight for his son, and, placing his muscular hand on his shoulder, shook him out of his benumbing stupefaction.

"What do you want with Prince Casimir Moskowski?" exclaimed old Prince Sonnenburg.

The clergyman, in a dry, scornful voice, replied: "This man is not Count Casimir Moskowski, but my son, Heinrich Klausner, betrayer, impostor, thief."

Then, scarcely audible, he murmured to his son: "Rise and follow me."

Heinrich rose mechanically from the table and allowed his father to seize his hand.

Then the Princess Ingola, full of fear, shrieked: "My husband! What are you doing with my husband?"

The clergyman turned round, and with his long, lean, extended arm indicated another visitor whom he had brought with him; and who, before he made his appearance, had been leaning against the lintel of the door.

"Your husband, Princess Sonnenburg, is standing there. That is Prince Casimir Moskowski, your lawful consort."

The creature standing against the door was the exile just returned from Siberia; a creature broken down by oppression and suffering, with a mop of tangled hair and a long beard prematurely grey; his face livid and sunken, and prematurely aged by a network of wrinkles; bentbacked, with hands purple, frost-bitten, and h.o.r.n.y from hard labour. Six years in the school of Siberia had reduced the stately son of the Starosta to this.

Just look at him!

At the sight of this spectre, Heinrich quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed a knife from the table, but his father still more quickly wrenched it from his grasp before Heinrich could draw it across his throat.

"Oho! my son! You don't get out of it so easily. You must make an exchange. The convict's coa.r.s.e sheepskin awaits you. Your name is '13579.' You can easily remember it; it is a perfectly straightforward series of odd numbers. Your predecessor bore it for six years."

And the exchange really took place. Both the Austrian and the Russian Governments agreed that this scandalous fraud must be kept a profound secret, which would have ruined two of the most ill.u.s.trious families of both empires. They also compelled the party most interested in the affair, the clever impostor, to make a late reparation. Moreover, Casimir had his property returned to him on condition that he acknowledged the Princess Ingola to be his consort. The Princess was also obliged to take him for her husband in order to procure for her children the family name, and the right of succession to the property.

They all went together to Bialystok, and there they lived, as well as they could, joyless, cut off from the world, with their doors closed against every one.

But Heinrich they sent to the banks of the Jenisei. They shoved him into the sheepskin which had been made expressly for convict No. 13579, and gave him his predecessor's digging implements, sledge--and Samoyede consort.

And the old Starosta lived for a long time after that. He lived long enough to see the death of the children bearing the name of Moskowski, both Maximilian and Stanislaus; he lived long enough to see the family name of the Moskowskis become extinct. No other offspring came to supply their place.

But the veritable offspring of his flesh and blood, the little Samoyedes, increased and multiplied like sparrows. Their descendants now people the plains of the Jenisei, and very careful and industrious peasants they are.

VII

THE CITY OF THE BEAST

_A CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY OF A VANISHED CONTINENT_

CHAPTER I

THE TABLES OF HANNO

Plato, the Sage of cla.s.sical Greece, speaks in his writings of a strange continent which, if historians and geologists are to be believed, must have lain somewhere between the island of St. Helena and the coast of Africa. The poets and philosophers of antiquity called it Atlantis, Oceania, or the Fortunate Islands.

In those days the earth was still a divinity to whom man raised altars.

In those days men had not arrived at the overpowering conviction that the whole globe was nothing more than a wretched mite of a ball, which the sun, out of regard for the equilibrium of the universe, or, perhaps for the mere fun of the thing, twirls round and round. They had no idea that you could sail completely round it; measure it; weigh it and calculate exactly how long it has lasted and how much longer it is likely to last. No! The Earth still retained the nimbus of divinity; was still regarded as immeasurable, infinite, incomprehensible; and the sun, moon, and stars were popularly supposed to be his va.s.sals.

Above the earth was heaven; below the earth was the Styx, and the dwellers on the earth lived in intimate relations with them both. No one had an inkling that the blue expanse above was only the reflection of the sun's rays refracted through the vapours of the earth, and that neither the G.o.ds, nor the blessed, could endure to live up there for the intense cold. No one knew that only the upper rind of the earth was solid, and that in the depths below the heat was so intense that the devil himself could only exist there in a molten condition.

In those days the earth was still an unappropriated domain. The poet could picture to himself bright fairy worlds beyond the continents already known, and the popular imagination was free to people the uninhabited wilds with all manner of marvels and monsters.

The wondrous thoughts of a poetic spirit betray themselves in these ideas and guesses. The spirit of invention three thousand years ago spoke of two gates which the then known world was said to have. One of these gates lay in the far north-east, between the snow and ice-clad Altai mountains, which set bounds to the wanderings of the nations.

Beyond this mountain chain it was said you could hear the din of Gog and Magog, whom the mighty conqueror Alexander had thrust out of the world behind gates of bronze, and who ever since have been baring and blasting rock and mountain, and digging subterraneous ways in order to escape from their prison. Woe betide the world and all that dwells therein if ever they succeed in forcing their way through the woody Imaus and appear, with their hairy faces, angular heads, unknown tongues, arms, and clothing, and deluge the world from end to end like the stroke of a great spirit paint-brush, which, after filling its canvas with mighty nations, splendid cities, and world-renowned conquerors, should suddenly wipe them off again at a single sweep in order to paint fresh subjects.

At the opposite end of the world, in the warm south-west, where the gaze of the dreamer loses itself in the endless blue mirror of ocean, the poet pictured to himself that happier world which sprang from the rapturous embrace of heaven and earth; a world where the air is balmier, where love is sweeter, where man is more valiant and woman more faithful; where the light knows no shadow, joy no grief, and the flower no fading; where everything--herbs, trees, and the hearts of men--rejoices in an eternal youth.

It is an odd phenomenon in the psychology of nations, that popular fancy should always have painted the North with the pale and sombre hues of fear and terror, whilst she looked for the fulfilment of her unattainable hopes to the equally dim and impenetrable South, and constantly sent her dreams and her sighs in that direction.

In the days when Rome, still in her first bloom, had begun to be the mistress of those regions which the geographers of antiquity called the known world, there arose another young city on the opposite seash.o.r.e, almost over against that great boot which we call Italy, and which, when once it had a good strong foot inside it, was to conquer the world with such rapid strides.